In Britain today there are strong pressures
not to upset people of a different colour, race or religion. At
the same time there is talk of increasing the number of religion
based schools. We also have the situation where people have taken
sides in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq because of their religious
beliefs. I think that these people have been and are misguided
in the absolute literal sense of the word.

Most acts of terrorism in modern times have been motivated by
self-appointed religious "leaders". Suicide bombers
have been brainwashed into believing that killing a lot of people
by committing suicide will bring them benefits in "heaven"
or "paradise". Some, if not all of these people have
been told that they can have unlimited sexual pleasure in "heaven"
or "paradise" as a reward for killing themselves while
killing others. These people never stop to think that it would
be impossible to have sexual pleasure without the body that will
be destroyed when the bomb is detonated. In a secular society,
a religious "leader" who persuades someone to commit
suicide in order to kill others should be treated as a an accessory
to murder - at least. Yet, religious terrorism is motivated
by a a sense of powerlessness against an occopying force in many
cases. If the occupying force has good defences, the religious
terrorists will find ways to attack supporters of the occupying
force who have weaker defences. The occupying force will, in almost
all cases, claim that the occupation has taken place for "good
historical reasons" which would not be acceptable in most
western countries. This exemplified in the Palestinian-Israeli
situation.

All the major religions and most of the minor
ones are based on the idea that a god or gods exist that can influence
life on Earth and can provide some sort of existence for humans
after death. Death is the common denominator because all living
creatures do their best to avoid it for as long as possible. Humans
have devised higher authorities in the names of gods to provide
an answer to death.

If the evidence is looked at dispassionately
one finds that all reported communications with deities have been
with individuals.Wherever one looks there is no independent corroboration that
such a communication has ever taken place.No god ever seems to
have had the power to communicate with more than one person at
a time.
This indicates that that all alleged communications with a deity
have been due to some form of hallucination or in a dream. In
many religions there are reports of people behaving in a manner
that is likely to produce hallucinations. The most notable of
these is fasting. (Fasting is self imposed food deprivation. Food
deprivation is a known cause of hallucinations.) Other causes
of hallucinations include the taking of drugs, eating poisonous
or unhygienic food, or participating in extremely violent exercise.

Examinations of mummified bodies indicate that
the people who were mummified suffered from a range of diseases
that can still cause problems for humans today. The evidence indicates
that humans who lived around 10,000 years ago were not significantly
different from modern humans. It can therefore be presumed that
ancient humans suffered from mental illnesses in a similar proportion
to the current human population. In this context the critical
mental illness is schizophrenia. Schizophrenia can vary in severity
in an individual and can exhibit itself in several ways. One of
the symptoms of schizophrenia is that the sufferer hears "voices".
These voices seem very real to the sufferer. Some of those who
suffered from relatively mild schizophrenia would have been able
to live relatively normal lives and some of these would have risen
to a degree of eminence among their fellows. Such people would
be able to say with misguided absolute conviction that they have
heard the voice of god - and be believed.

Ancient humans lived in tribal societies. The
records of these societies that exist show that the ancient tribal
ways and customs have their counterparts in tribal societies that
are in existence today. Anthropological studies of tribes in Brazil
and elsewhere show that a tribe is likely to have a dual leadership.
The tribe will be nominally led by a strong man or one of his
descendants. However, the person with most power and influence
in a tribe is the shaman or medicine man or witch doctor. Note
that two of these three western names for tribal shamans imply
that these people provided tribal medicine for their fellows.
These practitioners of tribal medicine usually learned their trade
from their fathers or other male relatives. They learned what
herbs and fungi could alleviate if not cure some medical problems
and what potions could kill without an apparent cause. At some
point success or failure would be ascribed to a spirit or deity.
The records show that when tribes became settled in the past,
the shamans used less medicine and made more use of an alleged
association with a spirit or deity. Some shamans became leaders
of their tribes through their claims to have a close association
with a spirit or deity. Others found that it was better to have
all the power that they wanted over a community without the risks
and responsibility of being the chief.

As tribal societies merged and cities were
built, some shamans got together to agree on a common spiritual
standard of reference. In time, one or two of these references
became what we now call religions.

I changed from being an agnostic to being an
atheist because of common factors among all the religions that
now exist. If there was a god and he, she or it had any influence
over human affairs, sooner or later the religions would converge
to become one universal religion. History shows us that religions
have become increasingly divergent. These differences have been
progressively exaggerated by the actions of past and current religious
leaders. This recorded evidence shows that the variations in religions
are all man made. Some of these have been brought about by "divine
revelations" that could have been caused by hallucinations,
or by charlatans who just claimed to have heard the voice of god..
It is undoubtedly true that many religious leaders past and present
have gained and maintained their positions of power by such claims.
In more recent times there has been a tendency for religious leaders
to avoid claiming any direct link to a deity. Instead they use
interpretations of passages from a "holy" book. They
imply or even state that what is written in the holy book cannot
be questioned so it must be a guide that has the force of law.
If the ancient writings in a holy book cannot be questioned, there
is an implication that the validity of the holy book is insecure
and might not withstand independent scrutiny.

Religious leaders also have one thing in
common that makes their status questionable. They are all originally
self-appointed.In nearly all cases
they are petty despots. Where an organised hierarchy is in
existence, an ambitious person can progress to having a religious
title that implies some form of superiority as an interpreter
of a religion.

I am tempted to identify two people who are
long dead who still have a great influence on the way two religions
are practised today. If they were alive today and behaved in the
same manner as is recorded, they both would be regarded as untrustworthy
people with problems. One would have been diagnosed today as having
a long history of a recurrent mental illness like schizophrenia.
The other would be regarded nowadays as a "turncoat politician"
of a (then) foreign nationality who had a "miraculous conversion".
He talked about a "Promised Land" that he claimed was
promised by his newly adopted god. Such a person would never have
been accepted as a leader in any modern society. None of the claims
by these two people (that they had been in communication with
a deity) can be verified. Tragically, many millions of people
believe today that these two long dead people had been in contact
with a deity and accept their claims as truth.

This essay would not have been written if
religions were not the cause of a lot of bitterness and suffering
in the world as we know it today. A
believer in any one religion has to face the fact that there are
millions of people who believe in other religions or none at all.
This can and does cause doubts in the minds of many believers.
For some, the existence of another religion is a challenge to
their beliefs. There are countless instances in relatively modern
history where people were killed because they had the "wrong"
religion. Even in 2004 there are religious leaders who advocate
killing those of other religions. A prosecution is in progress,
as I write this essay, against a religious leader who has made
videos instructing people to kill those of other religions. In
this case, as in all other similar cases that have been recorded,
the leader in question appointed himself. The alleged ancient
rule of the Greeks applies to believers who feel that their faith
is undermined by another religion. "Kill the bringer of bad
news." There are millions of people who are not convinced
believers who say that they are for sake of peace and quietness
or to avoid trouble and persecution. At the same time there are
others who have been duped or brainwashed into believing that
unsupported religous claims are the absolute truth. Some of these
brainwashed or otherwise deluded believers have appointed themselves
as guardians of morality. They intervene in such issues as human
fertility and abortion and have links with Creationists and animal
rights groups. They will use propaganda, threats, intimidation
and violence to try to enforce their points of view on society
in general. It is not easy to convince these people that their
beliefs are based on the claims of charlatans and those who would
be regarded today as being mentally ill. It is wise to stay well
out of the way of someone who suddenly realises that he or she
has been duped by religious lies.

The countries and regions that have been governed
by theocratic regimes all have a record of repression. They have
been responsible for heinous punishments of people who were alleged
to have committed offences against religious laws. Most of these
laws were drafted hundreds of years before the modern concept
of human rights was thought of and put into practice in the secular
world. The people who drafted these laws were self appointed like
all religious leaders. The existence of these religious laws is
virtually proof that that they have no connection with a deity.
If an all powerful deity existed, he, she or it could enforce
the correct behaviour among believers. The laws imply that the
deity has no power on Earth to influence the behaviour of his/her/its
followers. A deity without power can hardly be described as a
deity. Religions attempt to get around this problem by claiming
that the deity has authorised or commanded religious leaders to
act on his/her/its behalf. However, when one looks for the source
of the authorisation one finds that the deity has communicated
this information to only one self appointed person.

All of these alleged communications with a
deity have a common format: "He/She/It 'up there' has
told me to tell you..."

A clear indication of the real nature of Islam
is the complete absence of protest by any Islamists anywhere in
the world about the heinous ethnic cleansing currently being perpetrated
by the Islamic Sudanese government. The Sudanese Islamic Arabs
are pursuing a scorched earth policy to evict millions of animist
blacks from the south of the country. Contrast this Islamic silence
with the cries for vengeance from the Islamic world about the
ill treatment of 100 or so Iraqi prisoners.

A check on holy books will reveal that all
claims concerning communication with a a god are never questioned.
There is evidence that when many of the reports about communication
with a deity were written down, the writers were associated with
the religious hierarchy in existence at the time. In modern terms
the writers had to 'toe the party line'. All reports had to show
the religion in a good light and would be regarded nowadays as
religious propaganda.

Many past religious leaders are referred to
as prophets. These people claimed that things would be better
in the future and that a god would provide all the answers in
some way. The most common promise was life after death. They may
have been associated with, or were, astronomers who had studied
the way the planets and stars apparently move during the year.
The concept of a rotating and orbiting Earth was unknown to them.
As the movements of the stars and planets could be predicted with
reasonable accuracy, some of these people behaved and were treated
as if they could predict other events with comparable accuracy.
The pseudo science of astrology is derived from this concept.
Some religious events are associated with heavenly occurrences.
There have been attempts at identifying the sources of these phenomena
by modern researchers. The appearances of supernovae and comets
were treated as signs of great significance for good or ill until
recent times. However, the records we have of religious associations
with astronomical events have a very poorly defined chronology.
The reports were often written many years after the alleged events
occurred. It is fortunate that the ancient Chinese kept pretty
good records of astronomical events with an identifiable chronology.
These records are apparently less encumbered with religious orthodoxy
and are therefore more credible than comparable reports from other
sources. We now know that any association between an astronomical
event and an event here on Earth is purely a matter of coincidence.
(Large meteorites being a notable exception.) Yet in 2002 we find
that several religions have feasts or festivals associated with
events that were reported as being foretold by, or associated
with, astronomical events in the past. In today's terms these
events are comparable with associating the return of Halley's
Comet with the election, defeat or assassination of a political
leader.

A critical point about alleged communications
with a deity is the absence of any information about the world
and the universe. If there had really been a deity involved there
would have been some information about agriculture, geography
or astronomy included in the alleged communications. In all the
reports of such communications there are no references to anything
that was not general knowledge at the times when the communications
took place. On the other hand there are many instances when religious
authorities have denied, or tried to suppress, verified information
gained by secular means. If there had been a god to communicate
with, these organisations could have checked the accuracy of the
secular information. One can therefore conclude from the history
of such behaviours that the religious organisations did not communicate
with a deity or there was no deity to communicate with. The absence
of any communication with a deity is effectively proven by the
actions of the Roman Catholic Church against Galileo. He was forced
to deny what he had seen of Jupiter's moons through his telescope.

If the proposal to have more religion-based
schools goes ahead, the schools should be governed by absolute
rules. No uncorroborated reports of communications with a deity
should be included in any part of the education of the children.
The children should be told of the occasions when a deity has
communicated with two or more people at the same time and when
the deity imparted information that was not general knowledge
to the people concerned. Information about heaven should only
be taught by teachers who have been there.The same rule
applies to teachers who wish to teach children about hell. Information about life after death
should be supplied exclusively in lessons by dead teachers who
have come back to life. In this way
religion based schools could contribute to a body of information
that could be used as the religious part of the National Curriculum.
This curriculum could then be used by school inspectors to check
that only verifiable facts about religion are taught in all religion
based schools. All applications to set up religion based schools
in future should be accompanied by a verifiable communication
from the deity concerned. Existing religion based schools should
be given one year to revise their religious courses and to hire
teachers to match the National Curriculum requirements. Holy books
should be edited to include only verified reports of communications
with a deity. In this way Britain will be able to set the highest
standards of religious education in the world.

A summary of proposed questions for religious
leaders and teachers. (If I had my way, all these questions
would have to be answered before the person concerned could be
licensed to preach or teach in Britain.)

1. List the recorded communications with your deity (or deities)
which were shared by two or more humans at the same time.
2. List the recorded communications between your deity (or deities)
and a single human that can be proven not to have been hallucinations
or inventions.
(See Note 1.)
3. List the communications with your deity which have provided
useful practical information that was not known to the local community
at the time when the communication(s) occurred.
(See Note 2.)
4. List the aspects of your religion which are not based on the
laws and traditions of a tribal culture.
(The answer may include all information given
in the answers to questions 1 to 3.)
5. Give the name or names of people who have definitely been to
heaven or hell and have returned to describe where these places
are and what they are like.
6. Please say how your religious leaders are initially selected.
(This does not include promotions.)
7. Would you believe that God told me to write this?
(See Note 3.)
8. How would you use only the answers from 1 to 5 to promote and
justify your religion?
(See Note 4.)

Note 1
Modern science has shown that food deprivation often leads to
hallucinations. Many major religions regard fasting (self imposed
food deprivation) as a way to become closer to a deity. Hallucinations
seem real to the person who has them. Hardly anything was known
about the causes and effects of hallucinations before the middle
of the 20th century. It is therefore reasonable to infer that
many claims of contact with a deity (that are written about in
ancient books) were based on hallucinations. The writer of this
questionnaire knows of no reports of communications with the deity
concerning two or more individuals at the same time in the ancient
literature. There are many reports of such communications with
individuals that mention visions and dreams. This indicates that
few, if any, reports of such communications would be regarded
as reliable today.

Note 2
Practical information in this instance should relate to things
like: advice on animal husbandry and crop husbandry; advice on
medicines, care for the sick, and physical and mental illnesses;
information about the nature of the world, the nature of the universe,
the weather and climate; advice on the sterilisation, preparation
and storage of food; advice on sanitation, dealing with parasites
like lice, fleas and worms, etc. etc

Note 3
If you would not believe that someone you could meet and talk
to (like me) had been in communication with God, why would you
believe that someone who lived many years ago, who you have only
read about, had been in contact with God?

Note 4
Religious people should be restricted to using only the answer
to question 8 in any administrative, teaching or advisory capacity
that concerns people of other religions or no religion at all.